Tomás Eloy Martínez - Purgatory

Flares erupted around her; the whole stadium was jumping up and down, chanting Argentina! Argentina! She felt herself infected by this fervour, she felt it would be despicable to rush from the stadium to find Irene Cruz’s mother and hug her. Who knew in what pit of hell her daughter and her unborn grandson lay buried while the crowds on the stand chanted Argentina! Argentina! Who knew whether simply approaching this woman might not condemn her to death. A few metres away, Dupuy was smiling, regaling the Eel with stories of intrigue in the high command even as he told the comandantes what they should do and even what they should say on the radio on the day of victory. Around Emilia, everyone in the crowd, even the most anaesthetised, were on their feet, shouting insults at the Dutch team, wrapping themselves in flags and painted bed sheets. ‘ Argentina, champions of the world! ’ roared El Gordo Muñoz through transistor radios. ‘ Great and glorious, Argentina, Hear, mortals, the sacred cry! 21 ’ Emilia struggled from the arms embracing her, took Señora Cruz’s card, tore it to shreds and tossed it into the air to join the rain of streamers and confetti darkening the five o’clock sky.

I was still trying to work out what exactly the eruv was when Emilia asked me to go and see her. Autumn lingered on, it was late November but it was not yet cold. Water was freezing in the lakes of Vietnam, the oases of Libya, but in Highland Park, where the first snows usually fall about this time of year, the defiant warmth of summer refused to leave and the neighbours went jogging in the park in T-shirts. The map of the eruv Emilia had drawn had now been posted on the Internet: Donaldson Park and the Raritan River were outside its boundaries. My friend Ziva pronounced it eiruv , or ieruv , as the Russians do. One of the rabbis in town took the trouble to explain to me that it was a symbolic wall separating public space from private. On the Sabbath, it is forbidden to move things from one to another. Some communities forbid women from wearing jewellery and even sunglasses unless they need to. He gave me an example: on Saturday — Shabbat — it is forbidden to build. To open an umbrella, he explained, is similar to erecting a tent. Consequently, on Saturdays, it is forbidden to move beyond the bounds of the eruv with an umbrella. Highland Park is less than five square kilometres and a large section of the black neighbourhood is inside the eruv because the Almighty belongs to everyone, even those unfortunate enough not to believe in Him.

When I rang her doorbell, Emilia had just recovered from a panic attack and seemed about to have another. I don’t know how she made it down the stairs to open the door. I took her arm and helped her back into the hall. I find anything to do with mental illness distressing, I never know what to do to help. I’m terrified of saying the wrong thing and bringing down the whole fragile thing that is the mind. Emilia had turned on every light in the house. Her body was shaking as though her whole world had come crashing down. She wanted to tell me something but she was stammering so much I couldn’t understand her. I suppose that, if anyone had seen it, my clumsy, frantic attempts to help her would have seemed ridiculous. I brought her a glass of water, asked her if she wanted me to call an ambulance. She drank the water and hysterically told me not to call an ambulance. She sat for a moment saying nothing, hugging her knees to her chest. I had always felt that she was three distinct women: the old woman who showered the cashiers at Stop & Shop with coupons, the woman who was in love with Simón, and the little girl Dr Dupuy had destroyed. All three were there in front of me and I didn’t know which one to talk to. I waited until her breathing was calmer and asked her if she had any medication in the house that would help her sleep. I was going to give her some, stay with her until she fell asleep and see how she was the following day. She told me she had some pills in the bathroom cabinet she kept for emergencies and I went to look for them. There were about ten or twelve pill bottles containing the full panoply of pharmaceutical flora and fauna: Estradiol, a hormone replacement for women post menopause, Benadryl, Lexotanil, a sleeping pill from Argentina, Clonazepam and Vicodin, drugs used to calm anxiety and knock you out. Most of the drugs were dangerous, and there was more than enough for Emilia to commit suicide if she had a mind to. But she was not going to kill herself while she was still waiting for Simón.

Simón, once again, had been the reason for her call. ‘Please, I’m begging you, go into my bedroom,’ she said, ‘see if he’s hiding in there somewhere. I looked in the mirror and I didn’t see myself, I saw him standing there instead. For days now I’ve been working on a map and I get up to go to the bathroom or make a cup of coffee and when I come back the map is full of mistakes, or it’s been completely erased and I can’t start over again.’

‘Maybe you were distracted and you erased it yourself,’ I said. ‘Happens to the best of us. Maybe you made the mistakes yourself and didn’t realise. You’re not taking cocaine or LSD or something like that? You’ve got enough drugs in that bathroom cabinet to stun an elephant.’

‘No, I’ve never been tempted by things like that,’ she said. ‘Maybe later, when I’m too old for anything else. Besides, I almost never make mistakes when I’m drawing maps. It never happens to me at work, why would it happen when I’m here? As soon as I come through the door, I feel like there’s someone else here. Everything is exactly where I left it but nothing is the same. I don’t know if my senses are playing tricks on me and I need to know what you see, what you hear, since your senses are fine.’

‘I’ll go and look at myself in the mirror,’ I said. ‘But don’t put too much faith in me. My senses are shot, too. I think I’m losing my sense of touch, my hearing is going and so is my sight. I wrote a novel twenty years ago in which cats were stealing my character’s senses; by the time he died, he had none left. Now it feels like he’s come back for revenge.’

‘I read that one,’ she said. ‘The character’s name is Carmona 22.’

I was pleased she still remembered a book that few people had ever heard of. Besides, I was the least suitable person to bring her back to reality. I asked her whether she saw Simón or whether she thought she saw him.

‘I don’t understand the difference,’ she said. ‘I don’t talk to him, I can’t touch him, but I know he’s there. Ever since I saw him standing in the doorway — that doorway’ — she pointed to the door leading to the bedroom — ‘he hasn’t left, he doesn’t want to leave. He’s saying something to me, but I can’t understand him.’

‘I don’t understand you either, Emilia,’ I said. ‘You need to be clearer in explaining what you remember. When you tell me things, there are blind spots, contradictions, things that couldn’t have happened when you think they happened. I’m completely confused when you talk to me about your mother’s visits to the house on the calle Arenales, about when you moved back from the San Telmo apartment, how many times Chela’s wedding was postponed, about your father’s machinations. Maybe my senses are as damaged as yours. You need to go and see a doctor. I can’t help you. Just like you, I see things that aren’t there, but it doesn’t make me worry for my sanity. There are figures and feelings that are far removed from reality, or they’re part of a reality different from ours. Have you ever been to the Jewish museum in Berlin?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I’ve never been to Germany.’